Eve Arden, the sardonic comedian of many early films, later in her career became the beloved but still acid-tongued "Our Miss Brooks" on the immensely successful television series.

She established an early reputation as a long-legged, caustic comic in films of the late 1920s and early '30s.

But it was as Connie Brooks, the wisecracking English teacher in mid-America's mythical Madison High, where she constantly engaged in hilarious battles with her stuffy principal, that she became a Friday night favorite.

She was offered the role of the classroom humanist with the smart mouth and warm heart after being heard as radio's Miss Brooks for four years.

After the TV show went off the air she appeared briefly in her own "The Eve Arden Show" and then teamed with Kaye Ballard in the series "The Mothers-in-Law," which ran from 1967 to 1969.

She appeared in more than other 75 films, which she normally refused to see because she said she found them disappointing. They included "Stage Door," "The Women," "Ziegfeld Girl," "Cover Girl," "Night and Day," "Voice of the Turtle," "Anatomy of a Murder" and "Dark at the Top of the Stairs."